Dry Ultrasonic Inspection

We detect hidden defects with unmatched precision, without contact, without couplants.

Ultrasonic testing (UT) is an essential pillar of quality control in the materials processing industry, especially in safety-relevant sectors such as automotive and aerospace manufacturing. Traditional contact-based UT methods, however, require coupling agents like water or gels to transmit the ultrasonic signal effectively.

XARION's Laser-Excited Acoustics (LEA) technology enables fully automated ultrasonic inspection without water or gel, and without sample preparation.

  • LEA stands for Laser-Excited Acoustics. It is a dry, contactless ultrasonic testing method in which ultrasound is generated by a laser and detected with XARION’s Optical Microphone. Because no water, gel, or probe contact is required, LEA is suitable for water-sensitive materials, coated or rough surfaces, complex geometries, hot or moving parts, and automated inspection tasks. Unlike conventional laser ultrasound systems, which often rely on interferometric surface-vibration detection, XARION uses an Optical Microphone for detection. This makes the receiver less dependent on surface reflectivity, roughness, or coatings.

  • LEA can be applied to many engineering materials, including composites, metals, ceramics, CMCs, adhesive bonds, honeycomb sandwich structures, battery components, and microelectronic assemblies. System concepts range from small laboratory scanners to robot-based inspection cells for larger or curved components. The suitable part size depends on access, scan resolution, throughput, and automation concept.

  • Typical indications include delaminations, disbonds, voids, porosity, inclusions, cracks, lack of bonding, and thickness variations. The minimum detectable defect size depends on material, geometry, defect type, defect depth, inspection setup, scan pitch, signal-to-noise ratio, and acceptance criteria. For production use, detectability is usually validated on representative reference samples with known defects. For feasibility measurements, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

  • LEA can be used in single-sided pulse-echo, through-transmission, and pitch-catch or guided-wave configurations.

  • LEA systems are designed for industrial integration and can be incorporated into manual inspection stations, semi-automated setups, or fully automated production lines. XARION provides an acquisition and software interface that can be interfaced with any system.

  • LEA data are acquired with XARION hardware and analyzed using XARION’s LEAstudio software. The software supports A-scan, B-scan, and C-scan visualization, and result export. The LEAstudio software allows typical ultrasonic testing analysis workflows such as time gating, amplitude evaluation, time-of-flight evaluation, signal energy, and threshold-based OK/NOK evaluation.

  • Yes. Reports can include scan images, inspection parameters, sample ID, date, operator, system configuration, threshold settings, and exported results. The report format can be adapted to the inspection task and customer documentation requirements.

  • A typical project starts with an application discussion and feasibility tests on representative samples. Based on the results, the inspection concept, system configuration, software workflow, and integration requirements are defined. The project then continues with acceptance testing, installation, commissioning, and user training.